India Post rolls out Aadhaar biometric interbank services to boost financial inclusion

India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) is rolling out Aadhar Enabled Payment Services (AePS) to enable customers to use biometric authentication to perform bank transactions regardless of what bank their account is with, NDTV reports.

The IPPB will become the largest platform for interbank services in the country, according to the announcement, and it is hoped the move will assist the government’s financial inclusion efforts.

“With IPPB’s AePS Services, we now have the ability to provide Interoperable Doorstep banking services to customers of any bank including the 34 crore (340 million) Jan Dhan account holders, by leveraging the unprecedented last mile reach of IPPB,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, minister for communications, electronics & IT.

Jan Dhan is a government financial inclusion program launched in 2014 to increase the accessibility of financial services.

India Post Payments Bank Managing Director and CEO Suresh Sethi says AePS services are now available from more than 136,000 post offices, and supported by nearly 200,000 postal workers.

“The ability of the postmen and GDS to reach every village on an almost daily basis has brought down the distance to access banking services to ‘0 kms,’ truly capturing the essence of Aapka Bank, Aapke Dwaar,” Sethi says. The latter phrase translates roughly as “Your bank, your door,” according to Google.

India Post announced last year it would acquire 270,000 biometric scanners in support of the ‘0 km’ access goal.

Article Topics

Aadhaar  |  authentication  |  banking  |  biometrics  |  financial inclusion  |  India  |  secure transactions